Cutting Edge Technology, Information Capitalism and Social Revolution

by Davis, Jim; Hirschl, Thomas; Stack, Michael

• ISBN13: 9781859841853
• ISBN10: 1859841856
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-01-17
• Publisher: Verso

Summary

The rapid expansion of laborless production systems creates enormous instability. Money previously paid in wages is spent on technology. Workers lose jobs to robotic intelligence and, therefore, have no money to buy the goods produced by the technology. CUTTING EDGE provides an up-to-the-minute analysis of the complex relations between technology and work and how jobs and living standards can be protected.

Author Biography

Thomas Hirschl is Director of the Population and Development Program at Cornell University.

Guglielmo Carchedi is Senior Researcher in the Department of Economics and Econometrics at the University of Amsterdam. His previous books include Frontiers of Political Economy and Marx and Non-Equilibrium Economics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Integrated Circuits, Circuits of Capital, and Revolutionary Change	p. 1
Theories and Trajectories	p. 11
Robots and Capitalism	p. 13
Why Machines Cannot Create Value; or, Marx's Theory of Machines	p. 29
Capitalism in the Computer Age and Afterword	p. 57
High-Tech Hype: Promises and Realities of Technology in the Twenty-First Century	p. 73
Value Creation in the Late Twentieth Century: The Rise of the Knowledge Worker	p. 87
The Information Commodity: A Preliminary View	p. 103
The Digital Advantage	p. 121
The Biotechnology Revolution: Self-Replicating Factories and the Ownership of Life Forms	p. 145
Structural Unemployment and the Qualitative Transformation of Capitalism	p. 157
Conflicts and Transformations	p. 175
How Will North America Work in the Twenty-First Century?	p. 177
Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-Technology Capitalism	p. 195
A Note on Automation and Alienation	p. 243
New Technologies, Neoliberalism and Social Polarization in Mexico's Agriculture	p. 253
The New Technological Imperative in Africa: Class Struggle on the Edge of Third-Wave Revolution	p. 271
Heresies and Prophecies: The Social and Political Fallout of the Technological Revolution	p. 287
The Birth of a Modern Proletariat	p. 297
Contributors	p. 303
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